new paradigm in pop policy (fwd)

Mary, I have not read William Robinson's _Promoting Polyarchy_ yet. Can
you expand on this? One thing is clear that the US is not really concerned
with promoting the reproductive health or freedom of women over there. My
mother spent her high school education years taking _home economics_
courses in American-Turkish school according to the cirriculum designed by
westerners in the 50s. According to these cirriculums, women's place
was kitchen and men's place was work. Women were taught how to become
ideal/modern mothers as to make Turkey more acceptable to the west
and American family style. Women were domesticated as they became
westernized, but they were not liberated from patriarchal practices.
Patriachy was Americanized. That was all. The same story is still
continuing even in the West in different forms. Think about the gender
segregation in men's and women's occupational attainments and wages in the
US.

Regarding population issues, non-state feminist organizations in the
developing world, some of which are socialist, radical feminists (like the
leftish one I was a member before coming to US) are sceptical of *both*
the neo-liberal state policy of discouraging reproduction and the
conservative (largely islamist in the Middle East) policy of restricting
reproductive freedoms. Both are sexist as long as it is men who design
policies, though feminists, in principle, beleive that women must have
free access to birth control. So the issue is not choosing between the
liberal state and conservatism, but being critical of both, or
strategically supporting bourgeois democratic freedoms _when_ necessary
(in the case of equal education, divorce rights, domestic violence etc..
that have always been in the agenda of social democrats in Turkey).

Implementation of population policies depend on which period we are
talking about and who is charge of the capitalist state. For example in
the 1930s, in Turkey, just as everywhere around world at the height of
extereme nationalism, the state promoted a policy of over-reproduction as
to make women reproduce healthy Turkish sons.  Family planning was part of
the agenda of nation state building. State was the prime organizer of
sexual relations and nuclear family. Women were targeted to "modernize"
and purify the nation. Now, we have shifted towards neo-liberal economic
policies, minimal state, and the ruling classes are once again targeting
women to reproduce less in accordance with the requirements set by the US
and world technocratic apparatuses. New policies are targeting certain
segments of the population. They are both gender and class biased. The
realities facing working class women and other lower classes are much
worse because they are ones who are always blamed for _overpopulating the
nation_ with their so called _traditional life styles_.

Mine Doyran
SUNY/Albany


>The new paradigm for pop policy adopted by such organizations as the
>World >Bank is focused on "gender equity, human rights, and reproductive
health"  >following on the heals of the 1994 Cairo Intl Conf on Pop and
>Development. >Does anyone have any interpretations of this new strategy?
It fits >nicely >with the policy of "Promoting Polyarchy"  described by
William Robinson. 

>Mary Shepherd